


She Has the Last Word

by VS_Brewster



Series: The Pearl [3]
Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: During Catching Fire, F/M, Lemon, Oral Sex, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-24
Updated: 2012-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-31 16:44:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/346277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VS_Brewster/pseuds/VS_Brewster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After their final interview in the Capitol, Katniss' good mood make Peeta hope there could be more to their relationship.  Part of a series, but works as a stand-alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She Has the Last Word

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Characters and situations belong to Suzanne Collins. I make no money from writing this.

Katniss and I share our final interview at the Capitol. Caesar Flickerman is jubilant as I drop to one knee and propose. Katniss does a very good job of appearing overcome with joy. So much so that when we embrace, sharing one of those kisses that is owned by the Capitol and performed for the cameras, I can almost pretend that her happiness is real. I am split in two on the inside. The media farce and political tensions following The Hunger Games have delivered me what I have wanted most ever since I was a boy. But it’s not right. It’s not the same, knowing it is all pretend. In many ways it’s worse than not having it at all.

As Katniss takes my hand and kisses my cheek, I try not to think about this. She has been talking to President Snow, and they’re both smiling. Maybe everything will be alright after all.

As we exit the stage, Katniss is exuberant. We are still hugging and laughing long after the train has left the station and we have waved the cameras Good-Bye. We eat a painfully enormous meal. Even Haymitch seems to be on his best behaviour, enjoying only one snifter of white liquor with his meal. None of us eat with our fingers, just to upset Effie. And all in all, when we go to bed I regret that by the same time tomorrow I will be back in my lonely bed, ready for an early start at the bakery.

At nine o’clock Haymitch and Effie turn in. The red rims to Haymitch’s eyes suggest he badly needs to spend the rest of the night in the loving embrace of a white liquor bottle. The cracks in whatever cosmetics hold Effie’s face together for the cameras tell that she will be spending the next three hours plying herself with goo. Katniss and I hold hands as we wander to her compartment. We have long since given up the pretence of sleeping separately, despite Effie’s primness on the subject. If she leaks stories of our shacking up throughout the Tour to the media, so much the better.

After all, we are an engaged couple now. The Capitol would be thoroughly disappointed if we chastely kissed goodnight at her door and went our separate ways.

We are still smiling and sharing jokes about the trip when we curl around each other under Katniss’ blankets. Her hair is still in the elaborate braid that she wore at the reaping, and her stylists have been raving over ever since. As she settles her head on my arm, I reach behind her and loose some pins. The braid falls, and I comb out the silky strands of her hair between my fingers. With a smile, I note her hair is slightly kinked from the styling. I smooth until her hair is quite loose, tendrils falling across her forehead and cheeks.

"Are you glad we're going home? Or sorry?" I ask her very softly, as I watch my fingers play through her hair.

When she doesn't answer, I see that she has fallen asleep.

*

We are in the cave again. I am lying on the ground, caked in mud, knowing I am dying. But there isn't any pain. I lie utterly still. Katniss is leaning over me. She's bleeding as well. It pours from the wound on her head, and I know that there will be no victor from District 12 this year. All we have is the last few moments together, and the hope that this numbness will last till our end. 

No, I am not numb. Though she is bleeding, Katniss is slowly wiping the mud from my body. Her hands are warm and assured. They slip through the mud, sluicing it from my skin. A tingling sensation follows every touch, carrying on the path of her hands, until my body feels like it crackles with static. She finishes with my thighs. And pauses over my shorts. Katniss is so pure, I think fondly smile through the hum and fug and encroaching death. She has cleaned every inch of me leaving my skin aglow, but cannot bring herself to touch my shorts.

It is this thought that triggers the realisation that I'm dreaming.

My eyes open as the dream shatters, as dreams so often do when their true identity is discovered. It’s the nightmares that stick around, whether you know they’re real or not. Perhaps it’s because they have the power to follow so strongly into the real world – or perhaps because reality feeds them so directly. 

The train compartment is still dark, and I am cold. I frown. We must have kicked off the covers. And then I realise that the warm weight of Katniss' head on my chest is missing. Not missing, but moved. Looking down, I see her nearly at the foot of the bed. Her legs are curled into the space where the lower half of my leg should be, her toes just touching my shin. One of her arms is thrown across my thighs, and her head pillowed on my stomach.

I reach out and run my hand over her hair, splayed out over my chest. She raises up on her elbow and looks over her should at me. Katniss isn't gloriously happy as she was earlier. There's something strange in her eyes. A blankness I have never seen before, replacing the joy of earlier, the desperation they held in District 11, the sadness that they have shown since we left for the Hunger Games. They seem strangely empty. I make a move to touch her face, draw breath to ask if she's alright, but at that moment her fingertips graze over the shaft of my cock. Although the sensation brings me pleasure, a stab of irritation is my first impulse. That she won't allow me to ask her what's wrong; that she can use my own desire against me. As her head sinks back onto my stomach, it's clear that whatever she's feeling is not a topic for discussion. That tonight -- again -- there will be silence.

Something inside me urges me to break this silence. Her fingers trace circles over and over my thickening shaft. Again I draw a breath. Words never leave my mouth. I feel a warm, wet tickling that jolts through me. This new and unique sensation, I know, can only be the first tentative lick of her tongue. And with this new assault, my determination dissolves into nothing and my head collapses back onto the pillow.

My fingers weave through her hair again, but I am careful to neither pull nor push. I simply hold onto this extension of her as she explores me with her tongue.

The licks are hesitant at first. Staring at the dark carriage ceiling, I can imagine her fascinated, fixated expression as her hunter's instincts catalogue every reaction of my body. The twitching of my cock following each soft probe of her tongue; the slight jut of my hips when she licks beneath the head, a favourite spot of hers when she strokes me; the hissed intake of breath that I cannot help when her hot tongue wriggles against the slit.

When her hot mouth engulfs me, I cannot help my hand tightening in her hair. I release her again immediately, but am left entirely taut. She suckles on me, just the crown of my prick, and I can feel her tongue smoothing over and around me. She has forced every other thought from my head. I am just sensation, just this sensation, the rest of my body held suspended, fixated upon the slow movement of her mouth on my hard flesh.

Before I can properly register it happening, my hand is grabbing frantically at her shoulder. I pull her up scant moments before my cock jerks and a thick jet of semen shoots onto my stomach.

I lie panting, watching Katniss as she innocently draws the back of her hand across her mouth. The word ‘pure’ springs to mind again, but it’s too perverse for the moment and I quickly shake it from my head. Her eyes are still strange, but her lips are smiling ever so slightly. I sit up and reach for her, taking her wrist and drawing her towards me. My hand reaches between her parted thighs, but she pushes me away, shaking her head slowly. 

We sink down onto the bed together. She somehow arranges herself around the pool of cooling semen on my belly. As I ineffectually dab at it with a balled up sock, she surprises me by speaking. "We can't keep doing this, can we?"

I throw the sticky sock across the room, and settle her into a more comfortable position while I try not to point out that we're engaged and this behaviour should be positively encouraged. I brush my lips over her hair again. My warm afterglow is steadily being replaced by the sense that I was right: talking is going to spoil everything. "What do you mean?" I ask quietly, hoping that if I fain ignorance she can take it back, and at least something of these nights can remain as a rare happy memory when we're home.

"You know what I mean," she sighs.

"I've never asked you for anything, Katniss," I remind her. My arm automatically tightens around her shoulder, as though I can sense her mentally withdrawing from me.

"No, I know." Katniss bestows one of the rarest of gifts on me. She turns her head in towards my chest and takes a deep breath through her nose. As she releases it, her lips press against my naked skin and she kisses me. A real kiss, not a kiss for any cameras. "But we can't keep doing this."

As always, she has the last word. She sleeps deeply, her breath fluffing over my skin. I lie awake, hoping the morning will never come.


End file.
